Drinking containers are used to store and dispense a variety of products. The containers are sterilized, filled, hermetically sealed, and then stored for consumer use. To seal the product within the container, thermoplastic elastomer (“TPE”) seals are most often employed. One of the drawbacks of such TPE seals is that they can be difficult to use with fat containing liquid products, such as infant or baby formulas, or other milk-based or low acid products. For example, many such TPE materials contain leachables that can leach into the fat containing product, or otherwise can undesirably alter a taste profile of the product.
Another disadvantage of prior art drinking containers is that the TPE seals cover an undesirably large portion of the inner surface area where the product is stored, which increases the product's exposure to TPEs and further contributes to the difficulty in storing fat containing liquid products, such as infant or baby formulas, or other milk-based or low acid products.
A further drawback of prior art drinking containers, particularly containers for storing fat containing liquid products, such as infant or baby formulas, or other milk-based or low acid products, is that in order to drink or otherwise dispense the product, the screw cap or other type of closure must first be removed from the open mouth of the container. Then, the product is poured into a different container, such as a baby bottle having a nipple, or a container closure having a nipple is screwed onto the open mouth of the container. These procedures not only can be inconvenient and time consuming, but can lead to spillage and/or contamination of the product.
Another drawback of prior art drinking containers and methods of filling such containers is that the containers may not provide the desired level of safety with respect to asepsis.
Another drawback of prior art drinking containers is that they do not offer the desired level of convenience with respect to the preparation and feeding, or provide a relatively simple intuitive functionality.
Another drawback of prior art drinking containers is that the containers may not provide the desired level of comfort to a feeding infant in comparison to natural breast feeding and can contribute to incidents of otitis, i.e. ear infections caused by fluid build-up in the middle ear attributed in some cases to negative pressures generated by the infant during bottle feeding and/or colic. Yet another drawback is such containers can, during tooth development, contribute to orthodontic conditions such as tooth misalignments.
Another drawback of prior art drinking containers is that after the containers are filled and sterilized, the containers must be sealed and capped in separate stages, effectively reducing manufacturing throughput and increasing manufacturing costs.
Yet another drawback of prior art drinking containers is that is that once the containers are filled with product, the filled containers must undergo aseptic processing, such as retort sterilization, where heat is applied to the product, which in turn, can negatively affect the product formulation.
Another drawback of some prior art dispensers, such as dispensers for storing and dispensing food and beverage products, is that they do not allow for separate products, or components or ingredients of products, such as beverages and dietary and nutritional supplements, to be stored in the dispensers in separate chambers and intermixed shortly prior to use. As a result, such dispensers either do not allow for products containing certain desired combinations of ingredients, or provide products of lower quality than otherwise desired when products with certain combinations of ingredients are stored therein.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to overcome one or more of the above-described drawbacks and/or disadvantages of the prior art.